I’ll bet you had a list of favorite books when you were a child. Maybe it was a book that spirited you away to new worlds or introduced you to a character you admired. Maybe you loved the sound of an adult reading to you as you got ready for bed. Perhaps it was the discovery that the words strung together just so could help you create pictures in your imagination.

Chances are you were comforted by an illustration that perfectly captured the emotion of the moment. While we have all heard reading to children helps them develop literacy skills more quickly, we don’t often hear about one of the key benefits for the adults who read them: a ticket back to your own childhood. Here are some of my personal favorites that I’ve shared with my son.